Monday, May 29, 2006

Currently in print with various poets (including myself) are two issues of Calliope Nerve with nice poems, smartass sayings, and Wisdom Of The Ages. They are Paper issues, put forth by Nobius at White Rabbit-Black Hole. Write to him if your're interested and give him your mailing address.

He says: "Simply for the asking get the collaborative poetry and lit microzine Calliope Nerve issues I and II. Email your address to nobius AT gmail.com (no attachments please).

The debut issues feature works by Sheila Murphy, Billy Jno Hope, J.D. Nelson, James Dilworth, Ron Southern, and many more.

Now accepting submissions of unpublished and previously published works but again no attachments please/subject line Calliope Nerve submission.

Calliope Nerve is an ongoing zine featuring innovative short lit and poetry of all styles. Poetry is the air we breathe and the blood in our veins. All of our words are our children, God is in the ink."

He'll mail copies until he runs out of money or blood or ink, I imagine!

Sunday, May 28, 2006

I recently made arrangements for high speed Internet access through AT&T/Yahoo and it has been a curious boon. The high speed access has been great, but this major corporation bundles it with options that I wouldn't offer to my worst enemy! The sons of bitches are so proud of their sbcglobal@yahoo.com entity that they have me signed IN to it and signed OUT of the regular yahoo account that I already had emails and addresses in. I slithered through their morass of non-therapeutic crap until I found a screen where you could upload your old email stuff from half a dozen or more OTHER companies, including AOL but excluding their own former entity where my emails are! In short, they provided more convenience to completely foreign companies that they did to their own cohort!!! How stupid is that? Very, I think.

Oh, sure, I ended up talking to them on the phone and they had this nifty explanation about how I hadn't clicked the right buttons while signing up for the obfuscating son of a bitch. I believe that, I understand it because I make mistakes. What I don't understand is why there were no good explanations of those boxes that LET me indicate the wrong thing! They ask you obscure-sounding questions while you're in the midst of signing up for a new service that's already intimidating enough, and it's my fucking fault for clicking the wrong box? I told the nice young lady on the phone that I didn't want any more explanation about it, that all of old Yahoo and all of the new Yahoo put together were not worth the aggravation they were causing me. I told her if I happened to accidentally figure out how to follow her instructions at some future date, that would just be manna from heaven.

They are lucky there is no simple way for the public to easily click the right box and send them all to hell, because that's one thing I can guarantee would SOON be done! Yeah, the lady on the phone may be nice, but the buggers who run the company and write the Internet scripts are all a bunch of unapprehended Ken Lays. (They're all so sweet and so honest and wouldn't do anybody any harm...yet everything they turn out is crap!)

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Kiss me with your eyes closed and I will dream again, more true than any otherin love with love and you.

What prizes these all are! To kiss again and rise up when, to raise high hopes of pride and joy in lust again,

to seek bright love by Braille or sight, to ride that rigid razor's edge(straight as a vibrant spear is thrown) that only you could hone.

But, God, this long delay! The way that time draws out yet curves away and draws your flesh no closer to my own nor brings your voice to speak, your lips express, the love of which I dream.

Dear one, your heart's my own; your soul is mine, is home.To kiss you now would but complete one being—we are two halves just one-half beat apart!

The heart that beats in you so strong and longs for love and wrenches wildly from defeat, that heart could flare with crimson buds like thick-leaved green kalanchoes florescing in the dark,

could reach for heaven past all that's grim and stark and like a gray catbird could deftly sing a song so calm it glides above and rings the unrimmed roof cathedral-wide with psalms too sweet and clear for any cross-eyed church conceit!

“I'm fall-down blind in love, bright star,” he cried, but every time I rise again, you stand there and insist you're not the woman I insist you are!”

“I'm not the moonlight you adore, that's true,” she sighed, “or some wise repose or skewed white shadow of you, not some maiden wide and warm, supine or going nova—close kin perhaps—a friend—but not the kind you have in mind!”

Dear one, your heart's your own, your soul the same, I know. I court you on this page as if life and I are fair, yet we both know we'll spend and end our lives alone—at any rate, not together.

But, oh, this burst of loving you wrings new life from the dead, brings me up and flings me back, confounding all that I just said!

Dear heart, the pain, rejoice! To be awake so suddenly, to come alive headlong! To feel things right for once after such a long time wrong!

But, God, this gone-awry unguarded ardent bliss! Brave heart! Mirage! I'm dizzy and I shake like that unslaked tail-winged butterfly that clings, rhapsodic, quivering, drinking in all that pistil-sweet solution in my yard I can't get in!

Here, kiss me with your lips apart and I will ply you with this playful art (“Let passion live and rule!” I plead), more true in mind to this dim euphonious dream of you—

SHE does not lightly scorn bright love like it's some luxury or stain or claim she has to shun it like she does cocaine—

more true in mind to one like you, I cry, than any other fool you'll find in love with love and you!

I have to admit that I'm always amazed at how many blog sites there are that are investment-oriented or obsessed with get-rich schemes. I'm sure a lot of them think they're perfectly reasonable, though it all seems like clap-trap to me. They are fully engaged in having Adsense and other advertisements on their sites where if you and I click on the sites, the blog owner will be paid for each click. I guess it's because I know all the wrong people, but none of the people I know would be fool enough to be interested in all that garbage. Sorry, but that's it. How can I sell crap to people who always have their crap-detectors turned on? So, I'll decline the Adsense and other related items. I'll just sit here and count my pennies until I have enough for supper.

Okay, I know I'm cheating by writing less lately and just finding poems and "stuff" to put here. I've had a bad backache since unloading my damn new computer and it's not conducive to clear thought or writing grand pieces of fiction or observation! I plead being a sick person, which should come as no surprise to anyone who's been here before! Not to mention, I'm crazy as a loon most of the time anyway. If "they" come and take me away, you'll all be sorry. I think. I certainly will be.

Blogger Help Group, I've realized, keeps track of your messages for quite some time. In fact, it tells me I've done 1249 messages in the last few weeks! Of course, many of them were help files of my own devising that I merely pasted in and sent! But still, it was a lot of work. I wonder if their count is accurate, but I guess so. Makes me feel tired!

If anybody needs any help with their blog operations, go to Blogger Help Group; there's smarter people than me there who might help you over a rough spot. Depending on your timing, you might see a lot of signatures by "Rat" there, though I don't promise that they're all jewels of thought!

Wednesday, May 24, 2006

I write this in reference to all the things that never came to fruition and all the things that did, but then came to ruin!

Things pile up, in my life and in my mind, like junk in a dusty attic. Whether dumb or smart I am no longer certain, but I was always primarily a brain—a consciousness, I mean—and as I get older that characteristic becomes more dominant, not less. Maybe you understand what I mean, or simply remember that about me. You can't do much with me except talk, I'm afraid—especially now that I don't drink or do drugs. If you recall that of me, then you'll understand when I say that most women find me pretty much the same, except worse, and I'm not sure what to say about that. In some cases, it seems, women don't really like to talk, but in others they talk more than we do. Whichever is more typical, I am not in the mainstream of either activity, but in the cold.

I just watched “The Big Chill” again on cable the other night. I liked it better than I did the first time—the first time, it merely irritated me!—but I swear I think I understood it less. I still don't particularly know what they mean by the title. Oh, yes, I heard the dialogue about things being “frosty” out there in the real world, and so forth. But I've always felt that frost, or at least I thought I did. Now, I'm confused again.

Does nostalgia for one's old college and/or revolutionary chums spell out one's final demise from the old life? Does it proclaim the actual event or signal the absolutely compelling need that's in us to Emerge (like some catastrophic butterfly!) into bold adulthood before “it's” too late?

Butterfly. The adult stage of the order Lepidoptera,' which includes the moths, too, of course. It's mostly a difference in their antennae, as I recall, that sets them apart. Perhaps a more interesting name for an order is Ephemeroptera (as in ephemeral, you know). I believe it's the order that mayflies belong to.

This is it: “Ephemeral, from the Greek, meaning: lasting a day. Short-lived, transitory.” Butterflies don't do much better, nor does Man, not really. At least, not this man.

Strange, isn't it, to be “Men” now? It is for me, at any rate, because my sense of responsibility has increased so little. Peter Pan still floats around in my blood stream like a leaf in a stream, a fluid insensibility that's never been squashed. No matter what, one gets more middle-class, though—can't stand to live without this or with that, can't take the discomfort of certain places, faces, and situations. Just can't take it, really. My physical stamina is gone, gone, gone. Some of it's psychological, certainly, but much of it is simple body-rot. Ha! That much misunderstood, little-envied evolutionary process.

If “Man” is meant to evolve into a higher consciousness, it doesn't do one damn bit of good for individual men who are only destined to evolve into fertilizer. Maybe the smart thing to do would be to make babies and walk around with a dumb look on my face.

No, not really. I still can't stand babies. They want all the attention, and I have never gotten enough of it yet myself. I probably never will. And how could I be responsible for another when I've never yet been responsible for myself? Besides, it ordinarily takes a second party to make one of those, and the general prejudice is that it should be someone who loves you. I accept the prejudice, though not the apparent goal. Yes, the smart thing to do would be to find someone smart enough that I could stand to have babies with her, and then be smart enough to not have the babies. Ah. This doesn't mean very much, does it? I'm rattling on, like something broken.

(Note: If Dogger had lived, perhaps like the rest of us, he’d have not only married, but learned by now to like babies.)

Tuesday, May 23, 2006

Mark Twain: "The fact that man knows right from wrong proves his intellectual superiority to other creatures; but the fact that he can do wrong proves his moral inferiority to any creature that cannot."

What is more horrifying than flesh? Flesh that is fat or thin or fine, Flesh that is white or tan or scorched, Flesh that is cool or hot or torched By passions that emphasize the burrowed flesh, Passions that drive us to drink, to folly, To felons of abandoned ardor Or faggots of futile desire--

Keep watch. Keep watch and wait.

Watch for the heedless horror That crucifies desire; Watch how this deedless sorrow Mirrors madness in the fire.

Sunday, May 21, 2006

Here's a lady most people don't think of as sexy or nude; Elsa Lanchester was already old and fattish by the time I came along, so one's brain has to work backwards for this! But it appears that she WAS young once. Rumor has it that she loved girls. But, hell, so do I!

Friday, May 19, 2006

I'm so mean and vulgar, I should just be killed with a ball-peen hammer. I'll say anything in a fit of pique. This is how I avoid fist-fights, I guess, doing this. Is it a good idea? It is, now that I can't fight at all! Well, I hardly ever did have to fight, but I used to be perfectly willing to get in someone's face and make them think I would. I suppose there were a number of times that I escaped fights only because the other guy backed down or calmed me down. Oh well, I don't want to fight anyone right now. I don't even want to be mean and vulgar. So I don't know why I do it. It's pique and temper, I guess. Maybe that's why I'm so sick; it's just God slapping me down for being rotten. Jeez, doesn't he have anything better to do? The world's a bigger mess than I can make of it, I'm sure! Say, aren't there some totalitarian dictators that you should be filleting or roasting right now?! Surely, there are.

Thursday, May 18, 2006

Her voice was sweet. She caressed the back of his neck gently. He smiled and nodded.

"I'll fuck you til you can't say fuck," he thought cruelly.

And when he'd finally lulled her into closing her eyes and opening her legs, he jammed himself inside of her and fucked her so hard that her body jerked convulsively back and forth on the bed. Her head was pounded mercilessly against the wall behind her. Her tears flowed so fast that she thought she'd gone blind. She wanted him to stop, more than anything, of course, but his viciousness, combined with his weight on top of her, had completely overwhelmed her; she couldn’t make herself speak, she couldn't say "Stop!"

She laid there like a senseless thing, relaxing her legs and buttocks, moaning and sighing, letting him fuck her any damn way he wanted to. He thought she liked it. She thought she hated him worse than poison, but didn’t have the spit to say so. It would be a long night, no matter how soon he stopped.

Tuesday, May 16, 2006

My friend Bill says he’ll come this weekend. Jesus, tomorrow already. But he's supposed to phone tonight and say for certain, so he could still back out. He wants to go to the Rainbow People's gathering in Angelina State Park on July 4th. I don't guess I'll go with him. They're a sort of hippie group who've never died out, a collection of the old kind of creative misfits. An odd bit of business has been going on here, with the local authorities all vying for position as to which is the most hostile to the group.

To make it short, I think their shriveled little fascist-redneck hearts are more stirred up by the advent of the Rainbow people than they've been in years. Invasion of people from another planet, that's how they seem to see it, and it's crazy. It's as if the past 20 years never occurred. No progress whatsoever. Every tight-assed, legalistic barrier is being put in their way, and the cops are manning the roads trying to make drug busts of suspicious looking vehicles that might be headed for the campsites. What a lot of fucking bastards. Is there no end to our just being shitty to one another?

Monday, May 15, 2006

The level of my ennui has gone way up and wild And any heart to stick with it has departed.What difference does it make When my light and my support are gone And all the dark decisions and dim designs Of latter days are all gone to blazes Like a piss in the morning haze.

I smashed myself with a hammer, I tripped myself on my tongue.I fumbled my grip on everythingAnd I stumbled on my best intentionsWhich I knew weren’t worth a dime.

Sunday, May 14, 2006

Yes, it sucks. What does it suck, though? My own bad-tempered answer used to be that sometimes it sucks a dick. Maybe a donkey dick if I was really mad! Or “sucks shit through a straw”. That was a good one. Those were the direct dirty images I heard when I was growing up and learning it in the gutter. Your momma didn’t know!

Now my momma hears it all the time. The people who use it on the TV sitcoms and in polite company these days don't seem to mean anything like that, I guess, though they never, never specify. It’s all been whitewashed and watered down and toned down and has turned to mushy meal in their feeble mouths. ALL meaning seems to be gone. Maybe most of them are younger than I am and think it's a charming antiquity that means only "sucks the dirt from a vacuum cleaner hose" or something innocuous like that? Oh, is THAT what it means? I DON’T THINK SO! Bunch of nitwits!

I don't mind people using an obscenity to make their point, I just mind them using it like it's not an obscenity and I mind their not HAVING a point! For most modern users, it’s an obscurity, and they’re damn proud to use it that way and for it not to mean anything! I can’t say how much I regret all the simpering know-nothing bastards that have taken control of the world these days! I hate their miserable guts. I think they suck. I want the purity of my familiar guttersnipe world back!

For some time now, a "Presentation Rat" has occupied the space below the posts. I'll stick with him as a more handsome version, but here's the "real" deal; a "presentation rat" more in line with how I feel these days--feeble and shaky!

Saturday, May 13, 2006

Oh, hell, another weekend. People are off having fun again or else they're painting the house. Maybe they went to the movies; I hate movies, they burst my eardrums! There's nobody here but my baby, and she's getting to be old stuff. Not her fault, though, it's mine.

She's still pretty, but I expect that yours is softer and has wittier conversation!

Friday, May 12, 2006

My cousin snuck up and took this photo when I wasn't looking, during the gathering at his mother's 80th birthday. Back when I first saw it, I could like it because I looked like that. Now I'll have to get him to take some new pictures so you can see how much less of me there is! Whether I'm more handsome is a hard sell, though. I looked slim in my last winter photo, but I was wearing a jacket and long sleeves and didn't even have the sense to shape my beard. I looked like a wooly bear, or something. I'd be ready to go surfing with the boys now, if I could in fact stand very steadily on my feet on level ground! First things first, you know.

For those of you who never delved into my former site, Southern Exposure, you missed out on my colorful manic claustrophobic acrylic paints on Coke box cardboard. Okay, so I'm an amateur and a neurotic, too. I didn't have a computer at the time and I had to do something! Left to my own devices, I'll get creative even if it's only to draw in the sand with my toes. Stupid investment of time, but I'm the man for the job!

Thursday, May 11, 2006

I tried Picasa, but it wouldn't upload successfully. Probably because BlogThis doesn't work at present and I've never joined or downloaded Hello, if in fact Hello would put photos on the blog. Tell me if you know. Blogger's system seems to work the most and the most successfully. I hate to say it, but there it is.

Oouu, rats! Pictures of rats! Pictures of the persistence of rats! That's about the size of it. No other dumb things to add? No, but come back later! I have lots of dumb stuff I've been too dumb to find. This new computer finds things on its own; even brushes my teeth when I'm asleep. At least, I hope that's what's been happening!

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

I needed a test photo to put in Photobucket and try it out here as a hedge against the day that I may not have the use of my present host on the Internet. Anyway, it was a test. This is the dog that owns my heart, no matter that he's a long time dead.

I meet people and little kids even now and think, "I wish they could meet Grey!" Sort of like with my sister's grandkids, I wish sometimes they could have met my father, who died years before they were born. I know my Dad would have thought Shauna was very sweet and would have grinned and thought little John was the very devil! So, I have to be the one to think it. And I have to do the remembering of that good ole dog Gray.

If everybody who visits here left me a nickel, I might be able to buy toilet paper, not much more. Which is to say, big deal! Why won't you buy me a new car, dammit?! Because I am not worthy, I guess. Can't fool nobody these days. Sigh...

When women begin to blog about fashion and hairstyles, especially if they are being critical of others, I want to puke. Of course, what I really do is I just get up and leave the blog. It's easier than in real life, where you have to pretend to be going out for a beer or a carwash!

Tuesday, May 09, 2006

I don’t recall that many dreams, good or bad, but I must have had a bad one the other night! I couldn’t tell if I was awake or asleep, but opened my eyes and thought I saw a snake lying on the bed in front of my face! I was on my side, sleepy, and started to close my eyes and refuse to deal with it. I was SO TIRED. Then some other part of my brain or autonomic panic response kicked in and I rose furiously in the semi-dark room like a helicopter or something. Me and all the pillows and covers left the bed in one quick sweep! Staring back at the bed, I saw no snake, nothing. If it was real, it could now be anywhere on the floor, including under the bed stuff I was standing on! With great difficulty I found my way to a light—I’d landed on the wrong side of the bed—and turned the light on. I got a big flashlight and looked all around.

Eventually, finding nothing, it seemed like a lot of imagination might have done me in. Did anything really happen? About this time I saw a big blood smear on the bed sheet and wondered if I’d squashed something. Maybe a large bug or small grass snake (such as the one who was crawling in the hallway a few weeks ago)! Then, it dawned on me to see if I was bleeding. I checked everywhere and finally found a smear of blood on my elbow. Had I been bitten, stung? Or had I just scraped or scratched myself during the night or during the panic? Oh, hell, I was SO SLEEPY and just wanted to go back to bed!

Finally I did go back to bed, but I left the nearest lamp turned on all night. No more snakes. Just the shakes. What a weenie I am.

Sunday, May 07, 2006

I've clammed up again, but so have most of my friends and acquaintances. Of course, it was the weekend (wasn't it?) and that may explain a lot. I guess everybody was recreating, frittering away, distilling, waxing, waning, prevaricating, concatenating, and otherwise not giving a shit! Well, maybe. You have obviously mistaken me for someone who gives a rat's ass.

Hmm. Is that perky enough? Confused enough? Spoiling enough? Crude enough? Daft enough? Oh, let's all go home and fart til we go blind; this is not a productive day.

So many times Kow Kow had heard it said before Oh, don't, Lord, don't go near that door The cause of our evil you'll uncover Because of our misery you discover Well, misery seeks its own company Kow Kow had heard it said

Now he sits there crying Oh, with his hands across his head Kow Kow Calqulator Oh, a very smooth operator

Thursday, May 04, 2006

I went to the library one day for a quick book or two and before I left, I met this wonderfully charming young woman in line to check out. She was there with her little boy (about 6 or 8, I guess). He seemed like a nice kid, too. That was the problem—she was so young, perhaps her twenties. She, too, was just a kid. But very friendly and very charming.

I must say I yearned for her acquaintance, even if only perhaps to see her again at the library. Maybe her charm would wear off quickly, but it didn’t so far. She said she was a biology major at Mosquito University, had lately been reading about things like parapsychology. Woop, what do I care about stuff like that?

Her kid was checking out science books (ecology, for one, and a picture book on fish) for his summer reading. Where do such inquisitive kids come from here in Podunk, Texas?

Ah, well, the torpid observations of an ever-failing dirty old man. I’m still here, but I never saw her a second time. Women who aren't very glad to see me seem to come out of the woodwork, though.

Well, I got my Sandisk installed, easily on the new computer, with much travail on the old computer. I've transferred a few files, the ones I need for Blogger Help Group. So I've done it, but the Sandisk was not very clear about how to Copy or otherwise designate the files on my hard disk to be copied! I figured it out once, but it was obtuse and I can only hope I can figure it out a second time. Maybe I should go try right now.

This'll be a long delay, so don't hold your breath!

Well, that partly worked and partly didn't. Still, it's encouraging. It shows me I can copy the right files without deleting them entirely! Some went into the correct folders and some all jumped into a single directory! That's an odd thing for it to do when it was a single command for the whole list! In any case, it's partly done and entirely encouraging.

Soon I'll have everything in one place where it belongs. Goddamn hoo ha! That's my story, and I'm sticking to it!

You read those books where luxuryComes as a guest to take a slaveBooks where artists in noble povertyGo like virgins to the graveDon't you get sensitive on me'Cause I know you're just too proudYou couldn't step outside the Boho dance nowEven if good fortune allowed

Extract from "The Boho Dance" on Joni Mitchell's album "The Hissing of Summer Lawns"

Wednesday, May 03, 2006

Squibble and squabble, tibble and topple, Everything's going on and nothing! Bush won't stay off the airwavesOr get off the dime or even get a new dimeAnd everyone else I know has eitherToo much or too little characterAnd perpetually hangs around here too long! So where's that at?

Go and call Dr. Phil, he'll tell you, Tell it loud, make you proud to beA famous fuckup prick on his TV showFor 15 minutes, not longer. You went in beating your childrenAnd came out with Dr. Phil paying your psycho bills--It's not a bad deal, I'd say, For a demented degenerate loser skunk like you are!

I was on the brink just now of getting my Sandisk device installed, but I'm told that I need to load a driver on the old machine and somehow the CD drive won't even open the door! I could scream. I can't move any files, after all. My nephew might fix it, but not this instant; he's at work. The CD player always worked when I didn't give a damn, but now it chooses to die when I won't even need it but this one last time! I can still play on this new computer and DSL, but I wanted to move those files. I thought it would happen NOW! Fat chance. I may just plug it in, but I have no reason to think it has files in it that will recognize it. I barely recognize it. I didn't even know which end was which until I pulled on the device and was surprised to see which end had a plastic cover that came off. I ain't smart enough or alert enough for all this tribulation. I'm sick and get dizzy easily and angry even easier!!!

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

It's the weekend, and nobody's blogging much, not even me. This little bit hardly counts! There's a few mad hatters awake on the Blogger Help Group, or so it seems. They may only be yapping, and not awake at all! I don't feel too awake myself. I'm at home fighting with the DSL and my new computer--cheap, but new! It has more buttons than a gymnasium full of teenage girls, and I haven't punched half of them yet! Everything looks funny, though I'll get used to it someday. I keep thinking I'll access a file or two before I recall I'm on the wrong computer! I'll need to get a new device (maybe USB storage device?) in order to transfer my files. All my old stuff's on 5.4 floppies, but this rig doesn't have a floppy drive! Such drives are out of fashion. Okay, but it'll take me some time and maneuvers before I can catch up with the world! p.s. Okay, okay, so I can't keep my numbers straight! What difference does it make now that the 5.25" floppies are so defunct to anybody who doesn't have the old computers? I don't even know what day it is; but I'm retired, so it's not often required, dammit!